ZDFzoom, 2020, 30 minutes
Our meat consumption has been dropping for a few years. But not that of turkey. Poultry sausages are THE snack for whining toddlers, turkey escalope is the cheap alternative to veal. Yet it is turkey meat that we consumers should better keep our hands off... and not only with a view to animal welfare: in a random sample, ZDFzoom found antibiotic-resistant germs in almost two thirds of conventional and a quarter of organic turkey meat samples.
Cropped beaks, malpositioned legs, intensive use of antibiotics... everyday life, even in model barns. Yet the shortening of beaks is actually forbidden in the Animal Welfare Act as an amputation and is only possible with special permission - but this is routinely granted.
For ZDFzoom we succeed in taking a look behind the scenes of an industry where turkey chicks are licensed products from the breeding programme of two internationally operating corporations, trimmed for maximum performance. Organic turkeys also often come from these genetics factories. A conventional fattening turkey can reach a slaughter weight of 24 kilograms in 22 weeks. At the end of fattening, two and a half of the large animals share one square metre of barn space. This system causes many problems - for the health of the animals, but also for us humans.